My father was a research scientist at the Whitney R & D center for 34 years. Held over 40 patents. Mostly all related to high pressure work in synthesizing diamond and cubic borozon nitrate. Invented the process for making synthetic gem quality jade. He was a Coolidge fellow . I remember meeting as a kid Dr. Whitney and others there. They used to have a open house Christmas party at the lab. Father passed away last month in May, 4 months short of 100 years old.
Thank you for sharing. Your father made a very significant impact on the jewelry industry. I hope you realize this and are proud and aim to make him proud
@@jayst Thank you. I think he was most proud of the diamond crystal size control in making industrial diamond (GE's "diamond mine" in Worthington OH) and the sintering process to fuse diamond into a matrix that held together under high stress. Diamond is natures teflon. almost impossible to get it to stick to anything. High heat and pressure in a tungsten alloy matrix works. Most common use today is oil and water and other rock drill bits. Every diamond knife sharpener and dental burr etc. use the same tech. He and Francis Bundy made the first gem quality diamond in the Lab. GE's Jack Welch was a big supporter of the diamond and Cubic Borozon Nitrite production and research. originally the focus was on wire and drawing dies that would wear evenly and have long life. (GE light bulb ind.) They produced many gem quality stones in the lab (most from 1 to 2 carats)they could control color, size clarity. Carbon material was often made from a variety of common materials, including peanuts from Jimmy Carters peanut farm and the diamonds (3 made in Red , White and blue) made were presented to Pres. Carter. Stones were cut and polished and set by NYC jewelers. Smithsonian Natural History museum has a display in the Gem and Mineral exhibit with some of the early GE diamonds and a picture of my father and Bundy. Bob Wentdorf and Jim Fleischer made up the rest of the diamond mine team.
@@sportclay1 wow that’s very fascinating!! Thank you so much for sharing. He sure made a giant splash in the world as we know it today. I’d love to see the museum someday and be able to see that in person. I hope you are using your intellect for good as well as he did
@@johnstudd4245 Right, be we aren't cave men. So the internet/computer age is amazing, the machine age is a bit less and the iron age is less then that and the bronze age is less and the copper age is less and the stone age is less.
@@kkknotcool Every generation thinks they are so much smarter and better than the one/s before them. They are just building on what has been done up to that point, in a evolutionary step by step process. The real "revolution" was when mankind started recording his progress, sharing, copying and stealing ideas, building and growing knowledge based on trial and error and experience. The written languages, higher mathematics(and even simple) and the printing press were all astounding discoveries and inventions at their time, no different than our tech age today.
I started my working life as a GE apprentice machinist. I have always enjoyed working with my hands and this job was a perfect fit for me. At the Lynn MA GE I made parts for turbine generators. The machinist trade provided me with long term employment and a decent retirement.
A very under-appreciated and highly honorable skill. I learned how to use a Bridgeport knee mill a few years ago for very basic operations. Skilled machinists like yourself are very admirable.
this is POSSIBLE. BUT as you might know we must find ways how to make a living. I hate communism same turbo-predator-capitalism. TODAY we have corporatism (staate and capital swimming pools working together) In between would be great. Also the workers number MUST be BELOW 250 or better 100, because it get to anonymus and therefore to unhuman! A human can know max. 100 persons well.... Henry Ford said his beloved Model T must/should endure service FOR LIFE of the proprietor/owner. The Mod. A was yet constructed with "lower" standarts... I think EVERYTHING BEFORE 1968 (the sat an ists year) is build "forever" Kind regards and cordially, Géréon - a north german (Hannover) watchmaker (School 3 years in Hamburg 2006 to 2009) living in switzerland close to the lake geneva (french speaking area)
IN 1989 I GOT TO ATTEND A LOCOMOTIVE SERVICE AND REPAIR SCHOOL AT ERIE PENNSYLVANIA!! THIS IS A HUGE FACILITY AND WAS A VERY INTERESTING EXPERIENCE FOR ME!! THANK YOU GENERAL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE PLANT!!
I used to work for G.E. It was a very rigid and structured workplace, and I understand why they needed to be that way, I guess. But I didn't start to really learn and blossom until I worked elsewhere and was allowed more freedom of creativity. I guess it was a bit too 'stifling' for my nature. Some guys loved it though.
This video should be shown to all school children. Instead of teaching them to hate America , show them how great our country once was. Hopefully then we can make America great again.
"You can always tell a GE Man--but you can't tell him much!" Wow! At 6:57, they even mentioned my home town, New Kensington (PA), where they once had a conduit products plant just a few blocks away from Alcoa's New Kensington Works (our first full-scale facility, started up in 1891).
Wow! The skill it took to produce those products back then. We don't need that expertise these days, but we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for them. Never forget them!
GE and Westinghouse no longer the innovative manufacturing giants of the radio/television, appliance, instruments, electrical motors, and transformers industry. A bygone era that once was the backbone of America....Manufacturing! (Unfortunately, the narrator failed to mention perhaps the two greatest men that enabled GE to be the leader it was back then...Tesla and Carrier.)
Hay, if you can make more money making defence systems, why would you want to be in the other front line, fighting it out with other manufacturers to get a few dollars of the fickle Jo customer.......it's too much work, when you can build battle systems, that may never get used.
my grandpa was a tool and die maker at carrier. sadly when i came off age in the late 80s the writing was already on the wall..the globalists have a lot to answer for.
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Never knew insulating wire could be such a beautiful sight to behold. Oh we are most fortunate and pampered, those of us alive today. Better off on so many baselines, so as to place us among the top 0.01% of all humans ever lived ever. And how.
My neighborhood still has wires from those very rolls being wound in the video. Americas infrastructure is crumbling, while we pass "infrastructure" bills that pay for social engineering, rather than civil engineering. Daycare as infrastructure, is quite forboding.
It is utterly fascinating to see these pioneering scientists on film. Just looking these people up on Wikipedia and then seeing them, albeit briefly, working on film, brings them somehow to life.
@John Azhderian Yeah that was way before this country recognized liberalism, socialism, virtual signaling, and all the other crap that is going on today
Apple Sucks. Liberalism, and socialism have nothing to do with any of this. It is all from global financial greed. No politics needed. Once the rich realized they could make more money by shipping manufacturing off to some poor country begging for work and undercut wages at home the end was inevitable. No , I'm not a liberal by any means but it is not the political system or social interests causing all this, that is what the purveyors of this mess want you to believe. It all comes down to global corporate greed, not social politics. The money people have figured out how to screw all of us for their gain. 02-03-2020.
@@johnazhderian5734 still is chump: it will be clearly demonstrated when 🇺🇸USA goes to war with China or Russia, as I foresee it happening within a decade or so. I ask you; would YOU OR YOU FAMILY jump on a jet built in china? IF the public would quit buying the low quality and unreliable and throw away sh*t made in china, these jobs and plants would soon return!
"G...E General Electric. The Most Trusted Name In Electronics" (c. late 50's) My (late) older brother must've been shown this film. He went into electrical engineering but headed out to Lockheed and later, NASA.
I’ve two college degrees (BS in Chemistry, MBA.) I chose to join the military because I believed that was best where I could serve my country. What frustrates me is the lack of respect those who work with their hands receive in our nation. Many didn’t have the opportunity I had to go college - that doesn’t mean they are somehow less of person or any less deserving of respect. I’m an awe watching the workers machine and cast parts.
I agree. I started out in blue collar jobs in construction and then the military before going into engineering and project management. I will tell you that the comaraderie and sharing of knowledge was far greater in the blue. What I learned there will get me through any challenge in life, economy, inflation etc we face today.
I started by working in a TV shop at 13. I taught Electronics and Small Appliance repair classes while still in high school. At 20, I tested out of the Army's hardest electronics school while in Basic. It was a combination of Electrical and Broadcast Engineering. A feat that no one else had ever done. This was a MOS test given after three years in school and five years in the field doing the work. I scored over 93% on a cold test, where a vast majority didn't hit 40%. Outside the Army, it was convertible to the FCC First Phone by simply showing them your records and paying the fee. I worked in Broadcasting and other areas of Electronics with my last job at a company that builds Telemetry equipment for the Aerospace industry. I worked on a lot equipment for NASA, NOAA, The ESSA and other agencies. I was classed as 'Production Test Tech' but I created a lot of ECOs for product improvement, or to correct design flaws. I also designed and rebuilt test fixtures. I troubleshot and repaired commercial C-band satellite receivers in the '80s without a spectrum analyzer. I built the Ch. 58 NTSC TV station in Destin, Florida from an empty metal building I did wood and metal working. I repaired early computers to the component level. I repaired undocumented, one off pieces of electronics, and antiques like early Jukebox amplifies with nothing more than a voltmeter, and the RCA Receiving Tube Handbook. I repaired military RADAR, without training because they were shorthanded. In spite of this, people tell me that "You aren''t that smart!" This includes my entitled sister, who was a hair dresser. I rebuilt car engines as a hobby. I,did construction work and installed both the water and natural gas service to the home that I was restoring. It bugs me to meet people who can't even check their tire pressure.
The machines weren’t shipped anywhere; they wore out. American companies milked existing factories long past obsolescence and failed to invest in new technology. The rest of the world had suffered destruction in WW2 and had no choice but to build new, and those new plants were more efficient and lowered the cost of their products. America lost its competitive advantage to Europe and Japan long before China became a factor.
@@jacksons1010 most of what you state is absolutely right. I worked in several local factories in the early 1970's that used methods and tools that looked more like 1920, but when America's industrial might was coming to an end in the 80's I know a lot of USA machine tools were scraped or sold off to foreign buyers that we're glad to get it for peanuts.
@@jacksons1010 My dad spent 25 years working at Inland Container. The made corrugated paper boxes, (AKA:Cardboard) in some machines that were built in the late 1800s. They were to the point that the heavy steel rollers for the paper would crack and have section come out. They had a lathe that was over 20', center to center that could handle the multi-ton rollers. Other pats that broke were shipped to a large, local machine shop that made replacement parts for obsolete machine tools. Sadly, when they decided to modernize the plant, they spent millions on new equipment that wa very unreliable and more expensive to repair so they ended up having to continue with those old machines while they sued the company that built and installed the 'better' machines.
@@michaelterrell All you're really saying is the company ran old equipment until it couldn't be repaired anymore, then went cheap on replacements. That's exactly the poor management I'm criticizing.
@@jacksons1010 They didn't 'go cheap' It was considered the best new machine on the market. Those old machines are probably still in use. because the design is simple and highly reparable. They were in need of more production capacity in the company, and that location had room for another machine.. It just didn't live up to its reputation. There were several other box making companies in the local area that ran the same machines. I used to serve the PA systems in a lot of factories. Most ran three shifts for five to seven days a week, so the machines took a real beating. They were not high tonnage presses, and the same basic deign was still in production into the mid 20the century. That was just the oldest plant in the area,, so the machines were older. They had full specifications for the parts, and dimensional drawings. Another business in town made replacement Model A and T Ford car parts on original machines from Ford, including the machine that rolled a heavy steel wire into the edge of Model T fenders. His largest press was 20 ton, and none of his machines were purchased new. I had free run of his machines, because he was related to a good friend of mine. He even made replacement ignition coils with the Ford logo embossed into the casing. He bought the magnetics and insulator from Echlin, and canned them. He was the first company give permission by Ford to put their logo on replica parts. He was a tool and die maker who was laid off by a local aircraft company when they had a severe recession in the industry. By the time they wanted him back, he was making three times the income on outdated machines that had seen long service in the Automotive industry. There was a dealer in Cincinnati that bought, refurbished and sold used manufacturing equipment. I moved away 35 years ago, but I recently contacted his daughter online, and he was still running the business, into his 90s.
Just said I'm from one of the city's with a G.E. factory in the heart of my city of Fort Wayne, Indiana... Just sad they closed there doors to this beautiful, massive factory bulit in 1890's... Now is sitting empty, being vandalized, and destroyed... Now G.E. a gr ewww at American company failing about to be a forgotten history of the great manufactur of electrical products... just sad to see my country/ State of Indiana once great a great factory fall apart... 😔🥺😥😭😭😩😓
Yea. I drove past that plant many times. It was very impressive. 10,000 people worked there in the 50's. New plants are so boring . Just big square boxes with no windows and hardly any people in them due to automation.
The importance of today's public managers in corporate and public performance strategic management can best be set by precedent through understanding the performance of Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric beginning in 1981.
GE were quick to enter into making products that were predicted to hit high volumes back then and into power segment.....not sure if the same vision is there now......its more damage control now(not that its not required)........Wishing all the best to a company with such a great history
I would like to point out the General Electric produces the majority of high efficiency commercial and military jet engines in the world today, in it's Evandale, Ohio, plant for decades. The precision engineering for turbine blade and high efficiency green engines are the power plants for the majority of jetcraft Boeing and Airbus have been operating safely and and reliably for decades. Much of that engineering in design and production stand on the precision and knowledge gained in factories and research and development that GE demonstrates in this historical film.
NELA Park still exists in East Cleveland Ohio. It’s local claim to fame besides employing hundreds of residents from Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland is its annual Christmas light display. Down sized from earlier years. One of the engineers told me that GE could have beat others to the strobe flash market, but the Chief Engineer didn’t want to lessen its dominance in the flash bulb market.
Love these old movies. I'd like to show them what we're dong now. Just as I'd like someone from 50 years from now to show me what they've come up with. What's 3d printing like in 50 years.
At 24:45, the electric cooking range has 3 elements, and a mystery hole in top left of range. What on earth was that hole for, to put a saucepan in it and keep warm ? Also showing how electric element for range was made, we still have that in our current stove now. When they build it right, you can't improve something that works.
It wasn't really a "deep fryer". It was a deep well cooker, for soups and steaming vegetables and such. There are videos about them on RUclips. I don't know why stoves don't have them any more. They could operate like a crockpot too. Also, the pot could be removed and the burner raised to the same level as the rest if cooking demanded four surface burners. Made sense. One of the many innovations left behind that should not have been.
Growing up in Pittsfield, MA this is video is bittersweet. On one hand period they produced great quality products but at the same time polluting our soils.
Proof of planned obsolescence refrigerators last forever and air-conditioners need yearly service while they are practically the exact same thing working the same amount and until recently we only had to service one of them on a regular basis just goes to show when people don't have a clue the wool gets thicker.
All those manufacturing locations are virtually ghost towns now. Successive generations of asset strippers and greedy shareholders offshoring not only manufacturing but also R&D have reduced places like Youngstown to shadows of what they were even 50 years ago. Yes, capitalists in the 1930s and 40s were just as much focused on profits, but there was still some social responsibility there; that all went out the window in the 70s with Reagan and unfettered greed.
This story is about myths and legends in various parts of our world. We have ancient and accepted ways of perceiving a viewpoint held by most historians and some intellectuals. At times, the philosophical discourse is an ordering of these diverse parts of a worldly process that seems best described as hierarchical; yet it is also true that the parts of the entire world are knotted together in interrelations that seem more like a web than a ladder: while all involve brotherly love, truth, and relief. Thank you kindly. I like the empirical methodical way of protecting humanity.
At Generous Eclectic our workers' safety and comfort is our highest priority. We spend over a dollar per worker per year to provide HIM with the latest innovative tools to meet these goals. The average workers hours have been cut to a lazy 16 hours per day, as compared to his grandfathers 25 hour day. A special balm made of lead and mercury protects the worker's skin from the asbestos. His eyes are protected by a special glass infused with thorium for extra clarity. His lungs are protected by a thick "healthy" coating of nicotine provided at no charge by his generous employer. After cashing his whoppingly generous $40 a month paycheck. Our worker, on his own, clears his body of deadly bacteria with gallons of low cost alcohol purchased on credit from our company store! All of these innovations have extended the workers' life span well into his early forties! Yes sir, our workers have never had it so good! Now get back to work ya lazy bums!
2:40 "his researchers" invented invisible glass. They didn't say the name of the person that actually invented it because it was a woman, Katharine Burr Blodgett (January 10, 1898 - October 12, 1979) an American physicist.
Remember when America made everything and everyone had a job? I do, we used to work for a living. Today, we've given it all away for cheap junk and instant return.
They went around buying into industries thay had no specific expertise within, overpaying and acquiring legacy product and manufacturing. ( GE Security is an example ). Each of these acquisitions lost them a fortune, and then they sold the unit for 10 cents on the dollar of what they paid. Rinse Repeat, over and over....This is how the miracle of KMART/Sears played out, along with thousands of other examples. GE saw other companies doing this sort of thing, and figured they had to do likewise.
The electric eye taking measurements of the crated appliances and directing them to the right part of the warehouse is an early form of electronic automation. It would be interesting to know what circuitry was involved in that system since this was still the heyday of vacuum tubes.
14:13 Who says that people only started caring about energy efficiency in the 1970s? And that mercury turbine plant uses mercury in addition to water as the gas that spins the blades. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_vapour_turbine
Did you hear that? These guys got Nobel peace prizes for their achievements because they contributed to the better of mankind. They hand out Nobel peace prizes to people for learning how to tie their shoes nowadays.
@@siggyretburns7523 In the first place, the men in this video didn't win Nobel Peace Prizes. Secondly, neither Gore's nor Obama's Nobels had anything to do with tying shoes. Please, try harder to be a serious person, so that others may begin to take you seriously.
@@siggyretburns7523 Then listen again. (Based on the quality of your critique-"shoelaces"-I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that you appear to have misheard the narrator at least twice now.) The GE employee is described as winning a Nobel Prize, presumably in chemistry though perhaps in physics-not the Nobel Peace Prize.
I was amused at the comments about the asbestos suits that got hot while the guys were wearing them. There's a gaggle of lawyers right now making a fortune of of those poor factory workers who were just trying to make a living with the best technology of the time. Ycasts
Are you sure this is post-War? The style, and the quote at 15:00 about how electric appliances were virtually unknow 15 years ago makes me think it's mid to late 1930s.
Just going off of what is on the BFI website. It's entirely possible that they have it wrong -- I did wonder why no mention of the war effort in this film.
RonJohn63 Probably 1939-40. The refrigerator shown in production is the first "flattop" GE style, The took the original "Monitor Top" (the classic ones with the compressor on it's top) and inverted it and "hid" the compressor at the bottom inside cabinet for a more modern appearance. The door design is 36-40 by 41 the door became more rounded (beginning "streamlined" look that continued Post War.). Likewise the ranges became progressively more rounded as the 40s approached. Another clue that it's pre war is that consumer products are being made, It's late 30s as Television is mentioned, but the only finished electronic products from Bridgeport shown are radios. (Television WAS in limited service in 39-40 but really basically New York area only.) So my inner geek detective says 1939-40.
We had a giant GE plant in my neighborhood 70th and Elmwood Ave to 67th and Elmwood; HUGE building. First they cut it in half; in the 80's and now, The former lot is becoming an Amazon Fulfillment center...smh...
Pretty much obvious from the beginning...1939 the last time we had a positive inclusive view of the future and the basis of most day-to-day tech for the next 20 years if not longer.
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes. In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous RUclips users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do. Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
I am a retired industrial electrician with 50 enjoyable years. From my first month had trouble with garbage millon dollar swictgear mafe by ge. Took their horrible servuce department a year to secure a ge undervoltage relay from large ge factory 15 miles away. Took morons another year to get a drawing for replacement relay. Had to deal with just about every electrical manufacturing company but ge servuce & parts departments were always the worst. Had the most unreliable 13,200 volt switchgear.
Their TVs had the highest percentage of Flyback Transformer failures as well. Some would cause so much damage that the replacement came in an enclosed steel box, with a lot of new parts already installed. Their sets also generated a high level of X-rays due to the lack of proper shielding, so they starting using HV regulator tubes with a lead jacket over most of the glass envelope. That kind of crap is why Japanese imports put them out of the consumer electronics business. Luckily, most of the switch gear that I encountered was Square D or other brands. My high school had a large, dry Westinghouse transformer burn up over summer break in a vault under the Auditorium. It was only a few years old and with almost no load over the summer since the building wasn't in use. It took many months to get a replacement for a fairly stock item and to replace the burnt mess.
The only thing that exceeds mans knowledge of the forces of nature, are the vast numbers of discovery 's yet to be made. Tesla's mind worked on a level that has one wondering of extraterrestrial contacts. Imagine if one could harness a power of a star. Hard working men, as tough as the steel they forge, American men. And for all of his strength, he owes to a woman. Schenectady New York U.S.A. 🇺🇸
re: "Tesla's mind worked on a level ..." Deification of a man who put his trousers on one leg at a time too ... Tesla was multi-lingual, could read European patents, then FILE for the same things in the US. Change my mind.
@@uploadJ Just finished reading "Tesla" Inventor of the Modern. Very fair, very balanced bio of the man. He was not a god, in fact, he was a difficult person to even work with. He NEVER said he would furnish FREE ELECTRICITY to everyone on the planet. But try to explain that to the flat earthers, the perpetual motion machine nuts, the unlimited FREE POWER from zero point systems idiots. Pitiful is the only word to describe these morons. OK, rant over. I highly recommend the book.
THANK YOU for your testimony. I would also suggest reading Benjamin Garver Lamme's autobiography (archive.org) where he talks about meeting Tesla and working on one of his motors ...
But surely that's exactly what this type of film was originally intended to be? The format is modeled on "The March of Time", the US newsreel series sponsored by Time Inc. and shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. It was always an unashamed promotion of "The American Way".
This is very sad to watch. Not even the basics of this could be done today in this country, nor would any banker want to finance it. More money can be made by simply ripping off consumers, selling them plastic refrigerators for $3,500 each, made overseas by children in the third world. My dad has a Westinghouse refrigerator that has been running continuously for 70 years, and runs quieter than his new one.
And, like Western Electric; GE was very vertically integrated. They designed ( or stole the design for ) most of the parts that went into their products.
Billy Bob As mentioned, Most national references likely would have said "Pittsburgh" or at least "near Pittsburgh" as more people national wide would recognize Pittsburgh before a smaller nearby city like New Ken, McKeesport or even Greensburg. It was likely that mentioning New Ken avoids mentioning an area home to and dominated by GE's then largest and direct rival, Westinghouse. I suspect that if Chevrolet had a plant near Dearborn, They wouldn't mention Dearborn for the same reason, LOL!
@ 5:30 , when he started reading off the list of prominant inventors , starting with Edison , he should have left off Edisons' name , and put in Tesla .
On this topic, who is a good store/supply in the United States for rebuilding small armatures such as for me to buy the electrical paper that keeps the wire windings separated with the slots, varnish, wire, and such? Can anyone help because I am not having any luck at all, please?
"What is electricity? Even the famed scientists at General Electrics research lab do not exactly know." ...BOY, that's reassuring to hear. I'll keep that in mind for my next Westinghouse washing machine or stove. Its a very easy answer. Electricity is a form of energy. Just to verify i asked Siri. "Hey Siri, what is electricity?" Oops there it goes...again... Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Want to know more? No Siri i ask the questions around here, not you🙄
Worked in the GE turbine division in Lynn Massachusetts in the gear plant. In the mid 80s turbine left Lynn but the gear plant stayed. Lynn had the first manufacturing plant for GE at route 107 and federal str. They promised a marker for history sake but never did it. I left GE in 1986 as an r25 machinist in the gear plant. No jobs available but i could not work for a company that has no allegiance to the city or America. I quit but a year later got a better job and not in manufacturing. Such a great American company but has no respect for working Americans. I worked in the building with the largest machines made. I ran a horizontal boring mill that machined large parts. We will never see factory work again. It was a great experience but the top management i hope will rot in he11
My father was a research scientist at the Whitney R & D center for 34 years. Held over 40 patents. Mostly all related to high pressure work in synthesizing diamond and cubic borozon nitrate. Invented the process for making synthetic gem quality jade. He was a Coolidge fellow . I remember meeting as a kid Dr. Whitney and others there. They used to have a open house Christmas party at the lab. Father passed away last month in May, 4 months short of 100 years old.
amazing! id love too have met him.
Thank you for sharing. Your father made a very significant impact on the jewelry industry. I hope you realize this and are proud and aim to make him proud
@@jayst Thank you. I think he was most proud of the diamond crystal size control in making industrial diamond (GE's "diamond mine" in Worthington OH) and the sintering process to fuse diamond into a matrix that held together under high stress. Diamond is natures teflon. almost impossible to get it to stick to anything. High heat and pressure in a tungsten alloy matrix works. Most common use today is oil and water and other rock drill bits. Every diamond knife sharpener and dental burr etc. use the same tech.
He and Francis Bundy made the first gem quality diamond in the Lab. GE's Jack Welch was a big supporter of the diamond and Cubic Borozon Nitrite production and research. originally the focus was on wire and drawing dies that would wear evenly and have long life. (GE light bulb ind.) They produced many gem quality stones in the lab (most from 1 to 2 carats)they could control color, size clarity. Carbon material was often made from a variety of common materials, including peanuts from Jimmy Carters peanut farm and the diamonds (3 made in Red , White and blue) made were presented to Pres. Carter. Stones were cut and polished and set by NYC jewelers. Smithsonian Natural History museum has a display in the Gem and Mineral exhibit with some of the early GE diamonds and a picture of my father and Bundy. Bob Wentdorf and Jim Fleischer made up the rest of the diamond mine team.
@@sportclay1 wow that’s very fascinating!! Thank you so much for sharing. He sure made a giant splash in the world as we know it today. I’d love to see the museum someday and be able to see that in person. I hope you are using your intellect for good as well as he did
Cubic boron nitride, or CBN, is used for difficult cutting jobs in the machining and metalworking industries. Important technology.
These films make me long for the good ole days.
As an insulator collector I absolutely love the workmanship that goes into producing such a simple yet important piece of electrical history!
Watching this made me realize this era was equally as impressive as the internet age.
Equally ? Not even close in my opinion. The computer age couldn't have happened with out it.
@@whatyoumakeofit6635
The electric age couldn't have happened without the iron age.
But the iron age isn't near as impressive.
@@kkknotcool It was if all you knew was the stone age.
@@johnstudd4245 Right, be we aren't cave men.
So the internet/computer age is amazing, the machine age is a bit less and the iron age is less then that and the bronze age is less and the copper age is less and the stone age is less.
@@kkknotcool Every generation thinks they are so much smarter and better than the one/s before them. They are just building on what has been done up to that point, in a evolutionary step by step process. The real "revolution" was when mankind started recording his progress, sharing, copying and stealing ideas, building and growing knowledge based on trial and error and experience. The written languages, higher mathematics(and even simple) and the printing press were all astounding discoveries and inventions at their time, no different than our tech age today.
I started my working life as a GE apprentice machinist. I have always enjoyed working with my hands and this job was a perfect fit for me. At the Lynn MA GE I made parts for turbine generators. The machinist trade provided me with long term employment and a decent retirement.
A very under-appreciated and highly honorable skill. I learned how to use a Bridgeport knee mill a few years ago for very basic operations. Skilled machinists like yourself are very admirable.
I wish things were still built of this quality but with modern efficiency. Buy it once, buy it for life
this is POSSIBLE. BUT as you might know we must find ways how to make a living. I hate communism same turbo-predator-capitalism. TODAY we have corporatism (staate and capital swimming pools working together)
In between would be great.
Also the workers number MUST be BELOW 250 or better 100, because it get to anonymus and therefore to unhuman! A human can know max. 100 persons well....
Henry Ford said his beloved Model T must/should endure service FOR LIFE of the proprietor/owner.
The Mod. A was yet constructed with "lower" standarts... I think EVERYTHING BEFORE 1968 (the sat an ists year) is build "forever"
Kind regards and cordially,
Géréon - a north german (Hannover) watchmaker (School 3 years in Hamburg 2006 to 2009) living in switzerland close to the lake geneva (french speaking area)
IN 1989 I GOT TO ATTEND A LOCOMOTIVE SERVICE AND REPAIR SCHOOL AT ERIE PENNSYLVANIA!!
THIS IS A HUGE FACILITY
AND WAS A VERY INTERESTING
EXPERIENCE FOR ME!!
THANK YOU GENERAL ELECTRIC
LOCOMOTIVE PLANT!!
That beautiful, fluffy asbestos at 23:41 brings a tear to the eye.
I love that a good chunk of this was done in my back yard(Schenectady) , yet I hate where it all ended up today...
Same at my dads old general electric factory at 152nd location in Cleveland Ohio, da hood now a days
Schenectady is still changing while GE is coming apart at the seams.
I don't like too much Asia ia either.
I used to work for G.E. It was a very rigid and structured workplace, and I understand why they needed to be that way, I guess. But I didn't start to really learn and blossom until I worked elsewhere and was allowed more freedom of creativity. I guess it was a bit too 'stifling' for my nature. Some guys loved it though.
This video should be shown to all school children. Instead of teaching them to hate America , show them how great our country once was. Hopefully then we can make America great again.
"You can always tell a GE Man--but you can't tell him much!"
Wow! At 6:57, they even mentioned my home town, New Kensington (PA), where they once had a conduit products plant just a few blocks away from Alcoa's New Kensington Works (our first full-scale facility, started up in 1891).
Bump up for New Ken!
The Alcoa facility was a real treat to tour before they tore down most of the old campus.
I'm glad the giant G E sign still glows over Schenectady.
Most US plants, are just a distance memory
@@OKFrax-ys2op I know, so sad how we let this happen and China is the big winner...
@@Ed-ez8kl those oriental countries would never allow that to happen, but we sold out resulting in building prisons and not factories
They still make it red & green at Christmastime.
GE was never the same once Neutron Jack took over.
He was the beginning of the end of it.
He crippled GE Lynn we had 20,000+ employees there in the early 80s and now we have 1,500
Wow! The skill it took to produce those products back then. We don't need that expertise these days, but we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for them. Never forget them!
We STILL need that kind of EXPERTISE in MANY fields.
GE and Westinghouse no longer the innovative manufacturing giants of the radio/television, appliance, instruments, electrical motors, and transformers industry. A bygone era that once was the backbone of America....Manufacturing! (Unfortunately, the narrator failed to mention perhaps the two greatest men that enabled GE to be the leader it was back then...Tesla and Carrier.)
Hay, if you can make more money making defence systems, why would you want to be in the other front line, fighting it out with other manufacturers to get a few dollars of the fickle Jo customer.......it's too much work, when you can build battle systems, that may never get used.
@@robertwoodliff2536 Battle systems, that may never get used - as are often obsolete before they leave the factory ...
my grandpa was a tool and die maker at carrier. sadly when i came off age in the late 80s the writing was already on the wall..the globalists have a lot to answer for.
@@RedDogForge Making China a superpower, for a start!
Thank-you PeriscopeFilm, your videos are just awesome and I love them - Merry Christmas!!
Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
@@PeriscopeFilm Please consider adding a manner to support other than Patreon, Paypal, Cashapp. I have deplatformed them
Great! educational film. Informative and fun to watch a slice of American industrial history. Thanks!
Never knew insulating wire could be such a beautiful sight to behold. Oh we are most fortunate and pampered, those of us alive today. Better off on so many baselines, so as to place us among the top 0.01% of all humans ever lived ever.
And how.
My neighborhood still has wires from those very rolls being wound in the video. Americas infrastructure is crumbling, while we pass "infrastructure" bills that pay for social engineering, rather than civil engineering. Daycare as infrastructure, is quite forboding.
It is utterly fascinating to see these pioneering scientists on film. Just looking these people up on Wikipedia and then seeing them, albeit briefly, working on film, brings them somehow to life.
GE stock is now $7.16 the lowest price trading on the Dow but the only original Dow member remaining.
This movie was made when America was a great country. Unfortunately, the keyword is "was."
@John Azhderian
Yeah that was way before this country recognized liberalism, socialism, virtual signaling, and all the other crap that is going on today
Apple Sucks. Liberalism, and socialism have nothing to do with any of this. It is all from global financial greed. No politics needed. Once the rich realized they could make more money by shipping manufacturing off to some poor country begging for work and undercut wages at home the end was inevitable. No , I'm not a liberal by any means but it is not the political system or social interests causing all this, that is what the purveyors of this mess want you to believe. It all comes down to global corporate greed, not social politics. The money people have figured out how to screw all of us for their gain. 02-03-2020.
@@johnazhderian5734 still is chump: it will be clearly demonstrated when 🇺🇸USA goes to war with China or Russia, as I foresee it happening within a decade or so. I ask you; would YOU OR YOU FAMILY jump on a jet built in china? IF the public would quit buying the low quality and unreliable and throw away sh*t made in china, these jobs and plants would soon return!
11:15 the conductor of the steel mill orchestrating a master piece.
THE SAFETY OF THE WORKER IS OF PARAMOUNT CONCERN IN HIS FINE ASBESTOS CLOTHES...
"G...E General Electric. The Most Trusted Name In Electronics" (c. late 50's)
My (late) older brother must've been shown this film. He went into electrical engineering but headed out to Lockheed and later, NASA.
I’ve two college degrees (BS in Chemistry, MBA.) I chose to join the military because I believed that was best where I could serve my country.
What frustrates me is the lack of respect those who work with their hands receive in our nation. Many didn’t have the opportunity I had to go college - that doesn’t mean they are somehow less of person or any less deserving of respect. I’m an awe watching the workers machine and cast parts.
Having a trade is more or less equivalent to a degree
I agree. I started out in blue collar jobs in construction and then the military before going into engineering and project management. I will tell you that the comaraderie and sharing of knowledge was far greater in the blue. What I learned there will get me through any challenge in life, economy, inflation etc we face today.
I started by working in a TV shop at 13.
I taught Electronics and Small Appliance repair classes while still in high school.
At 20, I tested out of the Army's hardest electronics school while in Basic. It was a combination of Electrical and Broadcast Engineering. A feat that no one else had ever done. This was a MOS test given after three years in school and five years in the field doing the work. I scored over 93% on a cold test, where a vast majority didn't hit 40%. Outside the Army, it was convertible to the FCC First Phone by simply showing them your records and paying the fee.
I worked in Broadcasting and other areas of Electronics with my last job at a company that builds Telemetry equipment for the Aerospace industry. I worked on a lot equipment for NASA, NOAA, The ESSA and other agencies. I was classed as 'Production Test Tech' but I created a lot of ECOs for product improvement, or to correct design flaws. I also designed and rebuilt test fixtures.
I troubleshot and repaired commercial C-band satellite receivers in the '80s without a spectrum analyzer.
I built the Ch. 58 NTSC TV station in Destin, Florida from an empty metal building
I did wood and metal working. I repaired early computers to the component level. I repaired undocumented, one off pieces of electronics, and antiques like early Jukebox amplifies with nothing more than a voltmeter, and the RCA Receiving Tube Handbook. I repaired military RADAR, without training because they were shorthanded.
In spite of this, people tell me that "You aren''t that smart!" This includes my entitled sister, who was a hair dresser.
I rebuilt car engines as a hobby. I,did construction work and installed both the water and natural gas service to the home that I was restoring.
It bugs me to meet people who can't even check their tire pressure.
Hard to imagine there was a time before electricity was available to consumers.
You may well get to live it.... if our trajectory stays true.
Its still not available to much of the planet, and millions have never seen a toilet.
Isn’t it terribly sad to know that these machine are now melted down or disassembled and shipped off to Mexico or China.
The machines weren’t shipped anywhere; they wore out. American companies milked existing factories long past obsolescence and failed to invest in new technology. The rest of the world had suffered destruction in WW2 and had no choice but to build new, and those new plants were more efficient and lowered the cost of their products. America lost its competitive advantage to Europe and Japan long before China became a factor.
@@jacksons1010 most of what you state is absolutely right. I worked in several local factories in the early 1970's that used methods and tools that looked more like 1920, but when America's industrial might was coming to an end in the 80's I know a lot of USA machine tools were scraped or sold off to foreign buyers that we're glad to get it for peanuts.
@@jacksons1010 My dad spent 25 years working at Inland Container. The made corrugated paper boxes, (AKA:Cardboard) in some machines that were built in the late 1800s. They were to the point that the heavy steel rollers for the paper would crack and have section come out. They had a lathe that was over 20', center to center that could handle the multi-ton rollers. Other pats that broke were shipped to a large, local machine shop that made replacement parts for obsolete machine tools.
Sadly, when they decided to modernize the plant, they spent millions on new equipment that wa very unreliable and more expensive to repair so they ended up having to continue with those old machines while they sued the company that built and installed the 'better' machines.
@@michaelterrell All you're really saying is the company ran old equipment until it couldn't be repaired anymore, then went cheap on replacements. That's exactly the poor management I'm criticizing.
@@jacksons1010 They didn't 'go cheap' It was considered the best new machine on the market. Those old machines are probably still in use. because the design is simple and highly reparable. They were in need of more production capacity in the company, and that location had room for another machine.. It just didn't live up to its reputation.
There were several other box making companies in the local area that ran the same machines. I used to serve the PA systems in a lot of factories. Most ran three shifts for five to seven days a week, so the machines took a real beating. They were not high tonnage presses, and the same basic deign was still in production into the mid 20the century. That was just the oldest plant in the area,, so the machines were older. They had full specifications for the parts, and dimensional drawings.
Another business in town made replacement Model A and T Ford car parts on original machines from Ford, including the machine that rolled a heavy steel wire into the edge of Model T fenders. His largest press was 20 ton, and none of his machines were purchased new.
I had free run of his machines, because he was related to a good friend of mine.
He even made replacement ignition coils with the Ford logo embossed into the casing. He bought the magnetics and insulator from Echlin, and canned them. He was the first company give permission by Ford to put their logo on replica parts.
He was a tool and die maker who was laid off by a local aircraft company when they had a severe recession in the industry. By the time they wanted him back, he was making three times the income on outdated machines that had seen long service in the Automotive industry. There was a dealer in Cincinnati that bought, refurbished and sold used manufacturing equipment. I moved away 35 years ago, but I recently contacted his daughter online, and he was still running the business, into his 90s.
Just said I'm from one of the city's with a G.E. factory in the heart of my city of Fort Wayne, Indiana...
Just sad they closed there doors to this beautiful, massive factory bulit in 1890's...
Now is sitting empty, being vandalized, and destroyed... Now G.E. a gr ewww at American company failing about to be a forgotten history of the great manufactur of electrical products... just sad to see my country/ State of Indiana once great a great factory fall apart... 😔🥺😥😭😭😩😓
Yea. I drove past that plant many times. It was very impressive. 10,000 people worked there in the 50's. New plants are so boring . Just big square boxes with no windows and hardly any people in them due to automation.
Same here in Schenectady
@@VIVADUDE07 They are still open.
My mom and step-dad both worked and retired from GE. It was a great company until the closed down in the early 2000's.
The importance of today's public managers in corporate and public performance strategic management can best be set by precedent through understanding the performance of Jack Welch as CEO of General Electric beginning in 1981.
The middle class grew to huge Portions in this era
2:49 Rare to see Alex on film - he was a busy fellow!
Invented invisible glass!
"The safety of the worker is a prime concern". Obviously.
Safety Third!
I like how that Young man "Palms" that rotating piece in the Lathe, with his "RING" hand 'Like I'am a "PROFFESSIONAL " !
Kind of odd that they didn't mention Tesla when they were talking about the early electrical pioneers.
Tesla worked for Westinghouse.
How very far the mighty fall .
GE were quick to enter into making products that were predicted to hit high volumes back then and into power segment.....not sure if the same vision is there now......its more damage control now(not that its not required)........Wishing all the best to a company with such a great history
I would like to point out the General Electric produces the majority of high efficiency commercial and military jet engines in the world today, in it's Evandale, Ohio, plant for decades. The precision engineering for turbine blade and high efficiency green engines are the power plants for the majority of jetcraft Boeing and Airbus have been operating safely and and reliably for decades. Much of that engineering in design and production stand on the precision and knowledge gained in factories and research and development that GE demonstrates in this historical film.
NELA Park still exists in East Cleveland Ohio. It’s local claim to fame besides employing hundreds of residents from Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland is its annual Christmas light display. Down sized from earlier years.
One of the engineers told me that GE could have beat others to the strobe flash market, but the Chief Engineer didn’t want to lessen its dominance in the flash bulb market.
Thank you Nicola Tesla, for inventing all the AC devices for Westinghouse that GE used.
Tessa was a nutcase......much like his blind followers.
Love these old movies. I'd like to show them what we're dong now. Just as I'd like someone from 50 years from now to show me what they've come up with. What's 3d printing like in 50 years.
In the early days of my consulting career I worked at the campus in Schenectady
.
Reminds of the old timers that i worked with at MaBell.
Steaming asbestos clothing. I love this old timey documentaries
2:42 Invisible glass? 10:46 "Even the asbestos clothes of the workman smoke as he gets close"
Working on a 1948 GE 810 TV now... Wonder if some of those women assembled it.
At 24:45, the electric cooking range has 3 elements, and a mystery hole in top left of range. What on earth was that hole for, to put a saucepan in it and keep warm ? Also showing how electric element for range was made, we still have that in our current stove now. When they build it right, you can't improve something that works.
That my friend is something you don't see nowadays -- a built in deep fryer!
Yup - I was going to say it - deep fryer!!
It wasn't really a "deep fryer". It was a deep well cooker, for soups and steaming vegetables and such. There are videos about them on RUclips. I don't know why stoves don't have them any more. They could operate like a crockpot too. Also, the pot could be removed and the burner raised to the same level as the rest if cooking demanded four surface burners. Made sense. One of the many innovations left behind that should not have been.
"Even the asbestos clothing of the workmen smoke as it gets close."
Growing up in Pittsfield, MA this is video is bittersweet. On one hand period they produced great quality products but at the same time polluting our soils.
Silver Lake...
@@markanderson8066 Ahh yes. It caught on fire at one time. Not sure of the date but I heard the story.
Proof of planned obsolescence refrigerators last forever and air-conditioners need yearly service while they are practically the exact same thing working the same amount and until recently we only had to service one of them on a regular basis just goes to show when people don't have a clue the wool gets thicker.
Brilliant!
"Thousands of workers employed" Not now, it's computer robots in a different country. Sad
It's was coming back but Biden owes China so ya
Some day- - "Grandpa, what is television"?
Schenectady went from 40000 employees to about 3500 employees.
The exact same thing in Lynn MA
And now Schenectady has about 900 and Lynn has 1,500
All those manufacturing locations are virtually ghost towns now. Successive generations of asset strippers and greedy shareholders offshoring not only manufacturing but also R&D have reduced places like Youngstown to shadows of what they were even 50 years ago. Yes, capitalists in the 1930s and 40s were just as much focused on profits, but there was still some social responsibility there; that all went out the window in the 70s with Reagan and unfettered greed.
This story is about myths and legends in various parts of our world. We have ancient and accepted ways of perceiving a viewpoint held by most historians and some intellectuals. At times, the philosophical discourse is an ordering of these diverse parts of a worldly process that seems best described as hierarchical; yet it is also true that the parts of the entire world are knotted together in interrelations that seem more like a web than a ladder: while all involve brotherly love, truth, and relief. Thank you kindly. I like the empirical methodical way of protecting humanity.
This was a lot of words that (to me) did not say much.
@@paulloveless9180 You mean when someone talks a lot but says little.
Was that woven jacketed wire? That stuff always gives me the willies when I see it for real.
At Generous Eclectic our workers' safety and comfort is our highest priority. We spend over a dollar per worker per year to provide HIM with the latest innovative tools to meet these goals. The average workers hours have been cut to a lazy 16 hours per day, as compared to his grandfathers 25 hour day. A special balm made of lead and mercury protects the worker's skin from the asbestos. His eyes are protected by a special glass infused with thorium for extra clarity. His lungs are protected by a thick "healthy" coating of nicotine provided at no charge by his generous employer. After cashing his whoppingly generous $40 a month paycheck. Our worker, on his own, clears his body of deadly bacteria with gallons of low cost alcohol purchased on credit from our company store! All of these innovations have extended the workers' life span well into his early forties! Yes sir, our workers have never had it so good! Now get back to work ya lazy bums!
salty much? very funny, and poignant. Interesting, looking back 70 years
2:40 "his researchers" invented invisible glass. They didn't say the name of the person that actually invented it because it was a woman, Katharine Burr Blodgett (January 10, 1898 - October 12, 1979) an American physicist.
I believe there is a historical marker in her honor in front of the Global Research Center, but I can't find a reference for it.
Remember when America made everything and everyone had a job?
I do, we used to work for a living.
Today, we've given it all away for cheap junk and instant return.
Sad to think GE is practically bankrupt, it's share price down 88 percent from it's peak of 55.59. What went wrong?
Bad leadership
They went around buying into industries thay had no specific expertise within, overpaying and acquiring legacy product and manufacturing. ( GE Security is an example ). Each of these acquisitions lost them a fortune, and then they sold the unit for 10 cents on the dollar of what they paid. Rinse Repeat, over and over....This is how the miracle of KMART/Sears played out, along with thousands of other examples. GE saw other companies doing this sort of thing, and figured they had to do likewise.
Neutron Jack is wat went wrong
The electric eye taking measurements of the crated appliances and directing them to the right part of the warehouse is an early form of electronic automation. It would be interesting to know what circuitry was involved in that system since this was still the heyday of vacuum tubes.
We've already lived thru the golden years of civilization. It's only a matter of time before it's over. Probably within it's first term.
14:13 Who says that people only started caring about energy efficiency in the 1970s?
And that mercury turbine plant uses mercury in addition to water as the gas that spins the blades. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_vapour_turbine
RonJohn63 OMG!!! nice exhaust fumes fallout on public....crazy
@@motorhead6763
The mercury condenser/steam boiler returns the mercury to the boiler.
@@motorhead6763 No different from a BWR nuclear reactor where radioactive water spins the turbines.
I guess fumes or safety glasses and hard hats wasn’t a thing back in them day
From what year is this film ? I'm guessing the early 1950s ?
Any information we have about it appears in the description.
@@PeriscopeFilm
I didn't see any dates in there, except to mention Willis Rodney Whitney (August 22, 1868 - January 9, 1958).
Looks and sounds like the mid to late 1930s.
Others in these comments are saying 1939-40 (no mention of WW2).
Did you hear that? These guys got Nobel peace prizes for their achievements because they contributed to the better of mankind.
They hand out Nobel peace prizes to people for learning how to tie their shoes nowadays.
They do?
@@hughmac13
Pretty much. They gave one to Barrack Obama. For what I dont know.
Al gore too.
@@siggyretburns7523 In the first place, the men in this video didn't win Nobel Peace Prizes. Secondly, neither Gore's nor Obama's Nobels had anything to do with tying shoes.
Please, try harder to be a serious person, so that others may begin to take you seriously.
@@hughmac13
I'm sorry. What's that he says at 2:32? Sure sounds like he said he won a nobel peace prize.
@@siggyretburns7523 Then listen again. (Based on the quality of your critique-"shoelaces"-I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that you appear to have misheard the narrator at least twice now.)
The GE employee is described as winning a Nobel Prize, presumably in chemistry though perhaps in physics-not the Nobel Peace Prize.
Did lady dushman help you with your research? "help, she was the inspiration".
And this was the first company to ship all these jobs to China
Great video
I was amused at the comments about the asbestos suits that got hot while the guys were wearing them.
There's a gaggle of lawyers right now making a fortune of of those poor factory workers who were just trying to make a living with the best technology of the time.
Ycasts
What year was this filmed❓
Rachel, I think it was filmed in 1946, just after WW II ended.
@@monicaperez2843 Others in these comments are saying 1939-40 (no mention of WW2).
Are you sure this is post-War? The style, and the quote at 15:00 about how electric appliances were virtually unknow 15 years ago makes me think it's mid to late 1930s.
Just going off of what is on the BFI website. It's entirely possible that they have it wrong -- I did wonder why no mention of the war effort in this film.
RonJohn63 Probably 1939-40. The refrigerator shown in production is the first "flattop" GE style, The took the original "Monitor Top" (the classic ones with the compressor on it's top) and inverted it and "hid" the compressor at the bottom inside cabinet for a more modern appearance. The door design is 36-40 by 41 the door became more rounded (beginning "streamlined" look that continued Post War.). Likewise the ranges became progressively more rounded as the 40s approached. Another clue that it's pre war is that consumer products are being made, It's late 30s as Television is mentioned, but the only finished electronic products from Bridgeport shown are radios. (Television WAS in limited service in 39-40 but really basically New York area only.) So my inner geek detective says 1939-40.
Good call, James.
We had a giant GE plant in my neighborhood 70th and Elmwood Ave to 67th and Elmwood; HUGE building. First they cut it in half; in the 80's and now, The former lot is becoming an Amazon Fulfillment center...smh...
Anyone who says today "Jesus Christ my day was a bitch at work" needs to see this.
WOW! they had very few computers back then-and they were primitive.
"even the workman's asbestos clothes smoke as he gets close". Ugh...
"Safety of the worker is the prime consideration." 09:25
Ignorance is bliss. But who knew what, when?
Great America
U r also great
general electric was the google of 19th century.
*20th century. We are in the 21st century now.
@@classicpontiac37 15 April 1892 - GE foundation date.
Actually, this was produced in 1939, just before World War II began in Europe- and over two years before our entry into the war.
Pretty much obvious from the beginning...1939 the last time we had a positive inclusive view of the future and the basis of most day-to-day tech for the next 20 years if not longer.
Building a turban. An Pakistani or Indian can wrap a turban in seconds. Oh, he meant 'turbine'.
Hey Periscope Films. How about putting the time stamp in the closed caption instead of always across the image? It is distracting. 02-03-2020.
Here's the issue: Tens of thousands of films similar to this one have been lost forever -- destroyed -- and many others are at risk. Our company preserves these precious bits of history one film at a time. How do we afford to do that? By selling them as stock footage to documentary filmmakers and broadcasters. If we did not have a counter, we could not afford to post films like these online, and no films would be preserved. It's that simple. So we ask you to bear with the watermark and timecodes.
In the past we tried many different systems including placing our timer at the bottom corner of our videos. What happened? Unscrupulous RUclips users downloaded our vids, blew them up so the timer was not visible, and re-posted them as their own content! We had to use content control to have the videos removed and shut down these channels. It's hard enough work preserving these films and posting them, without having to spend precious time dealing with policing thievery -- and not what we devoted ourselves to do.
Love our channel and want to support what we do? You can help us save and post more orphaned films! Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Even a really tiny contribution can make a difference.
I am a retired industrial electrician with 50 enjoyable years. From my first month had trouble with garbage millon dollar swictgear mafe by ge. Took their horrible servuce department a year to secure a ge undervoltage relay from large ge factory 15 miles away. Took morons another year to get a drawing for replacement relay. Had to deal with just about every electrical manufacturing company but ge servuce & parts departments were always the worst. Had the most unreliable 13,200 volt switchgear.
Their TVs had the highest percentage of Flyback Transformer failures as well. Some would cause so much damage that the replacement came in an enclosed steel box, with a lot of new parts already installed.
Their sets also generated a high level of X-rays due to the lack of proper shielding, so they starting using HV regulator tubes with a lead jacket over most of the glass envelope. That kind of crap is why Japanese imports put them out of the consumer electronics business.
Luckily, most of the switch gear that I encountered was Square D or other brands. My high school had a large, dry Westinghouse transformer burn up over summer break in a vault under the Auditorium. It was only a few years old and with almost no load over the summer since the building wasn't in use. It took many months to get a replacement for a fairly stock item and to replace the burnt mess.
The only thing that exceeds mans knowledge of the forces of nature, are the vast numbers of discovery 's yet to be made. Tesla's mind worked on a level that has one wondering of extraterrestrial contacts.
Imagine if one could harness a power of a star.
Hard working men, as tough as the steel they forge, American men. And for all of his strength, he owes to a woman.
Schenectady New York U.S.A. 🇺🇸
re: "Tesla's mind worked on a level ..."
Deification of a man who put his trousers on one leg at a time too ...
Tesla was multi-lingual, could read European patents, then FILE for the same things in the US. Change my mind.
@@uploadJ Just finished reading "Tesla" Inventor of the Modern. Very fair, very balanced bio of the man. He was not a god, in fact, he was a difficult person to even work with. He NEVER said he would furnish FREE ELECTRICITY to everyone on the planet. But try to explain that to the flat earthers, the perpetual motion machine nuts, the unlimited FREE POWER from zero point systems idiots. Pitiful is the only word to describe these morons. OK, rant over. I highly recommend the book.
THANK YOU for your testimony. I would also suggest reading Benjamin Garver Lamme's autobiography (archive.org) where he talks about meeting Tesla and working on one of his motors ...
We have harnessed the power of a star. Ever hear of solar energy?
@@OldsVistaCruiser Ever hear of nuclear energy? Where do you think those highly radioactive elements originated?
general electric needs to make all ther stuff in the usa and canada now we need good jobs
This is more of an advertisement than a documentary.
Still, very interesting and great slice of prewar ww2 manufacturing history, nonetheless.
But surely that's exactly what this type of film was originally intended to be? The format is modeled on "The March of Time", the US newsreel series sponsored by Time Inc. and shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. It was always an unashamed promotion of "The American Way".
This is very sad to watch. Not even the basics of this could be done today in this country, nor would any banker want to finance it. More money can be made by simply ripping off consumers, selling them plastic refrigerators for $3,500 each, made overseas by children in the third world. My dad has a Westinghouse refrigerator that has been running continuously for 70 years, and runs quieter than his new one.
And, like Western Electric; GE was very vertically integrated. They designed ( or stole the design for ) most of the parts that went into their products.
@@spannaspinna I paid $US 400.00 for my fridge-freezer in 2020.
Stupid Edison / Smart Tesla....!
Smart Tesla, reading all those European patents THEN filing for the same things here - SMART!!!!
Both Edison and Tesla got most of their work stolen by Wall Street Bankers. Edison did do better but still he lost control of GE in the end.
What is Electrickery ?
Cat Weazle xD
Mentions New Kennsington, rather than that areas larger and more well known city: Pittsburgh, because.... Westinghouse. 😂 ...You can be sure!👍
I go to Penn state new Ken, I was very surprised to see that new kensington was mentioned
Billy Bob As mentioned, Most national references likely would have said "Pittsburgh" or at least "near Pittsburgh" as more people national wide would recognize Pittsburgh before a smaller nearby city like New Ken, McKeesport or even Greensburg. It was likely that mentioning New Ken avoids mentioning an area home to and dominated by GE's then largest and direct rival, Westinghouse. I suspect that if Chevrolet had a plant near Dearborn, They wouldn't mention Dearborn for the same reason, LOL!
@ 5:30 , when he started reading off the list of prominant inventors , starting with Edison , he should have left off Edisons' name , and put in Tesla .
Or at least added Tesla. It isn't an either-or.
Tesla worked for GE's arch enemy Westinghouse. Doubt if they wanted to talk about him.
On this topic, who is a good store/supply in the United States for rebuilding small armatures such as for me to buy the electrical paper that keeps the wire windings separated with the slots, varnish, wire, and such? Can anyone help because I am not having any luck at all, please?
It was called 'Fish Paper', at a friends motor shop, back in the '60s.
@@michaelterrell Thank you for this. Happy belated New Year.
@@jtg2737 You're welcome. May you have a Blessed day!
@@michaelterrell You too!
Yes and GE laid them all off before they could retire.
The asbestos clothes of the workman
This narrator must have graduated from the Learn how to Talk like God Academy.
This was done in many industrial films of that era. These were produced for internal use, in classrooms.
Aaaah, Yes! When we still made sh*t here... Amazon type warehouse, before Amazon warehouse - 28:26
"What is electricity?
Even the famed scientists at General Electrics research lab do not exactly know." ...BOY, that's reassuring to hear. I'll keep that in mind for my next Westinghouse washing machine or stove. Its a very easy answer. Electricity is a form of energy. Just to verify i asked Siri. "Hey Siri, what is electricity?" Oops there it goes...again... Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Want to know more? No Siri i ask the questions around here, not you🙄
Worked in the GE turbine division in Lynn Massachusetts in the gear plant. In the mid 80s turbine left Lynn but the gear plant stayed. Lynn had the first manufacturing plant for GE at route 107 and federal str. They promised a marker for history sake but never did it. I left GE in 1986 as an r25 machinist in the gear plant. No jobs available but i could not work for a company that has no allegiance to the city or America. I quit but a year later got a better job and not in manufacturing. Such a great American company but has no respect for working Americans. I worked in the building with the largest machines made. I ran a horizontal boring mill that machined large parts. We will never see factory work again. It was a great experience but the top management i hope will rot in he11
Ah, the sensationalized narration style of old.
10:46 Asbestos clothes
2:50 guy invented alernator? Didn't Nikola invent that AC?